Does the Left Wish To Preserve Basic Freedoms?

Certainly not first amendment rights, and they prove it every day. This warning is from FEC Chairman Lee E. Goodman, as told by the Ace of Spades: “The Left Will Not Stop Until It Enlists the Power of Government to ‘Regulate’ Political Speech by Conservative Media, and Even Conservative Blogs.” A collection of hypocrites of the first-order, the Left’s tolerance of speech depends of course on how much they like your rap. Equal treatment by tax authorities? No. Neutral media regulation? No. Even-handed grants of waivers for political contributions? No. Harassment by law enforcement based on the content of speech? Why yes. Just ask Nakoula Basseley Nakoula and Dinesh D’Souza.

Here’s Daniel Henninger on the Left’s role in degrading free speech, and even the right to due process, at American universities. “Make no mistake, universities under constant pressure from the Obama administration and the most driven members of their “communities” will comply and define due process downward.”

In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads---in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. -- Jacques Barzun